WOLCOTT ON IMUS

James Wolcott offers a strange defense of Imus:

Indeed, no one was more emphatic in pounding home the issue of
incompetence and misery in the veterans hospitals than Imus...

and approvingly quotes Tom Watson:

Imus famously called Dick Cheney a war criminal, hit Halliburton for refusing to contribute to a new hospital for wounded veterans, and has been a long and consistent critic of this dreadful failed war.

Wolcott seems to forget that it was the WaPo reporters, Dana Priest and Anne Hull, who broke the Walter Reed story, not Imus. Watson seems to have forgotten that Dennis Kucinich opposed this immoral and illegal war long before Imus did, that Cindy Sheehan helped galvanize the anti-war movement and that many have called Cheney a war criminal.

The only thing different is that Imus had his own radio show, the same show that had Bernard McGuirk as producer, a producer who routinely made racist comments. Priest and Hull worked to get at the truth, Kucinich and Sheehan have paid a price for their moral convictions, Imus paid a price for being a racist pig.